{"id":212,"date":"2005-09-11T10:43:48","date_gmt":"2005-09-11T15:43:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=212"},"modified":"2005-09-11T16:55:18","modified_gmt":"2005-09-11T21:55:18","slug":"wordpress-theme-designers-annoy-the-crap-out-of-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=212","title":{"rendered":"WordPress theme designers annoy the crap out of me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Having discovered that my WordPress 1.5 upgrade broke the CSS and<br \/>\ncustomized template I had designed for WordPress 1.2, I&#8217;ve been<br \/>\nshopping for a new theme at the <a href=\"http:\/\/themes.wordpress.net\/theme-viewer.php\">WRC Theme<br \/>\nViewer<\/a> site.  I&#8217;m looking for something clean and simple that I<br \/>\ncan customize to my taste.<\/p>\n<p>Having browsed through over a hundred and fifty themes, I&#8217;m left with one<br \/>\nburning question in my mind: why are 90% of these themes designed by<br \/>\nutter pinheads who don&#8217;t understand basic Web concepts like letting the<br \/>\n<em>viewer<\/em> control the presentation?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve ranted about the drooling idiocy of pixel-sized fonts before.<br \/>\nMany of these themes not only make that mistake (which hoses anyone in<br \/>\na screen with a DPI different from the designer&#8217;s), they cram the<br \/>\ncontent into boxes or vertical bands that <em>don&#8217;t resize when you<br \/>\nwiden or narrow the browser<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>There are a handful of honorable exceptions: Clasikue.  Anarchy.<br \/>\nCurtains up.  Dixie Belle.  Elvgren.  Flex.  Fullwidth.  Gentle<br \/>\nCalm. Gila. Greenwood. Ice. The three &#8220;Journalized&#8221; themes. Man-ja.<br \/>\nOperate.  Placidwide. Psycho. Rampart. RohitKumar.org.<br \/>\nSixties. Steam. But by and large, almost all of the more than 250<br \/>\nthemes at this site (and elsewhere I&#8217;ve looked) make the same basic,<br \/>\nunforgiveable error.  They treat the display like fancy paper under<br \/>\nthe control of the theme designer rather than allowing the<br \/>\n<em>user&#8217;s<\/em> preferences to control font sizes and the width of the<br \/>\ndisplay area.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the <em>web<\/em>, you morons!  Stop wasting readers&#8217; screen<br \/>\nspace with frames and diapered borders.  They have better use for<br \/>\ntheir pixels than all that frou-frou crap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Having discovered that my WordPress 1.5 upgrade broke the CSS and customized template I had designed for WordPress 1.2, I&#8217;ve been shopping for a new theme at the WRC Theme Viewer site. I&#8217;m looking for something clean and simple that I can customize to my taste. Having browsed through over a hundred and fifty themes,&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=212\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">WordPress theme designers annoy the crap out of me<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}